Prescott to campaign in Glenrothes by-election as Labour bids to avoid second humiliating defeat

Support: John Prescott will campaign in Glenrothes to help win the by-election

Labour has ordered John Prescott into an increasingly desperate fight to avoid defeat in Thursday’s Glenrothes by-election.

The former deputy Prime Minister will lead a last gasp effort to prevent what insiders fear is another humiliation at the hands of the Scottish National Party.

Gordon Brown's hopes of scoring a much-needed victory in the seat next door to his Fife constituency appeared to be fading.

Friends fear he is on course to suffer a personal rejection in his Scottish backyard after he and his wife made high-profile visits to the constituency.

Until a few days ago Labour appeared quietly confident that it could defy the critics and pull off a win in Glenrothes.

They hoped that Mr Brown's decision to make two campaign visits to the seat, coupled with frequent appearances by Mrs Brown, would galvanise voters in his favour.

But insiders say the mood has changed in recent days. Tonight there were suggestions that Labour could lose by 1,000 votes or more.

A win for Mr Brown will be seized on by Downing Street as concrete evidence that the Prime Minister has put the crisis in his leadership behind him.

Defeat, however, will be received by MPs as an unwelcome reminder that despite the revival in his fortunes Mr Brown is still struggling to connect with the voters and shows no sign of being a winner for Labour.

Labour held Glenrothes by more than 10,000 votes in the 2005 election but has since seen its popularity hit by a surge of support for the SNP.

Mr Brown's advisers have refused to predict the outcome, with some polls suggesting the result is too close to call.

But if Labour loses the seat, Downing Street will hope that the scale of the defeat was not as shocking as the losses in Glasgow East and Crewe and Nantwich.

The Prime Minister has enjoyed what has become known as a ‘Brown bounce’ in recent weeks that has allowed him to slash the Tory lead.

Voters appear to be giving him credit for his handling of the financial crisis, after Mr Brown was praised by other countries for his £37billion plan to save banks from collapse.

What was a dominant Tory lead has been reduced to less than 10 points in leading polls, encouraging Labour hopes that Mr Brown could confound his critics and lead Labour to victory at the next General Election.

In the summer Mr Brown's position looked precarious after he suffered a succession of catastrophic by-election losses in Crewe and Nantwich and Glasgow East.

Two months ago Labour was ready to write off Glenrothes as another unavoidable defeat.

But the change in Mr Brown's fortunes following the shock reshuffle that brought back Peter Mandelson and the emergency bank rescue package persuaded the Prime Minister to throw everything into the Glenrothes campaign.

He defied the convention that keeps Prime Ministers out of a by-election campaign to make two visits to Glenrothes, the seat next door to his.

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Prescott to campaign in Glenrothes by-election as Labour bids to avoid second humiliating defeat